OSGi Developer Certification - Professional Exams for 2017

The OSGi Alliance is pleased to announce two dates for the OSGi Developer Certification - Professional Exam this year. London, UK in June and Ludwigsburg, Germany in October.

CLICK HERE TO BOOK NOW

The certification exam provides you with a means to validate your knowledge and experience with OSGi technology and the specifications.

The exam is open to everybody (you don't have to be an OSGi Alliance member to participate) however it is recommended that you have a good understanding of OSGi technology and practical experience of using and developing with OSGi. 

The exam is made up of three distinct sections:

1. a hand written Q&A,
2. a practical assignment where you submit your code
3. a practical troubleshooting assignment for which you submit a hand written answer

You can find more details about the exam including how to book, topics covered and a comprehensive FAQ on the Exam website. There are also details for contacting us if you have any questions.

If anyone has a requests to operate an exam in your locality please contact us via email.

New OSGi R7 spec drafts published

In the OSGi Enterprise and Core Platform Expert Groups we are working hard on the upcoming R7 specifications, which are planned to be released later this year. Recently the OSGi Alliance published the current drafts of some these specs.

In this blog post you can read a very brief summary of what is new, for all the further details look in the drafts.
In the Enterprise draft specification - new and changed are:

• Remote services (ch 100) - has been enhanced to include new standard intents that require minimum remote service capabilities, asynchronous processing or a private remote connection.
• Declarative Services (ch 112) - this spec has received a substantial update, including delayed object reclamation, component property type enhancements and other updates.
• JPA Service (ch 127) - has been updated to support JPA 2.1, supports standard JPA 2.1 configuration properties with the EntityManagerFactoryBuilder and now specifies a number of standard Capabilities to integrate better with the Resolver.
• new Transaction Control Service (ch 147) - this new specification provides an improved mechanism to perform work in a transaction scope. It provides a higher level of abstraction than the existing JTA integration specification, and makes it really easy to write transactional code, especially when using Java 8 lambdas.
• new Configurator Specification (ch 150) - the configurator makes it possible to store configuration data for Configuration Admin driven entities in a bundle. The configuration is stored in a spec-defined format inside the bundle and can be used to configure any number of bundles, components, services or other entities via the Configuration Admin Service.
• Promises specification (ch 705) - this spec is now updated with a number of improvements including timeouts, easier exception handling and callbacks.
• new Push Streams (ch 706) -  This new spec provides a programming model similar to Java 8 pull-based streams, but then using a push model. This can be very useful for data such as events that arrives asynchronously. The data can be mapped, buffered, splitted, filtered or otherwise processed before it gets pushed to the receiver. 
• new Converter (ch 707) - This spec defines a portable converter that can convert nearly everything to nearly anything. Especially useful then converting untyped data such as a Map to a typed API such as an interface, DTO or annotation. Converters can also be customized to support user-defined types or to create deviations from standard behavior.

The Core Specification has also been updated. Besides a number of small changes and improvements - see the Changes sections in each chapter for details - the Core spec now defines new Annotations in the org.osgi.annotation.bundle package that can be used to define bundle headers from inside the Java code of your bundle. For example, these can be used to declare requirements and capabilities that your bundle could have or to declare which packages should be exported.

The R7 March 2017 drafts for the Core and Enterprise specs can now be downloaded from here: https://www.osgi.org/developer/specifications/drafts

Finally, not yet in the draft, but coming up as well are:

• Cluster Information Specification (previously known as Cloud Ecosystems), from RFC 183.
• CDI integration, you can read more about this in RFC 193.
• JAXRS integration, see RFC 217.
• HTTP Whiteboard Extensions, RFC 223.
• Resolver Service updates: RFC 224.
• Configuration Admin updates, RFC 227.

China Bound in March 2017 / 2017年3月中国事件记

中文发布稿 / Chinese version

The OSGi Alliance has a couple of exciting activities taking place in Guangzhou and Shenzhen in China at the end of March:

• CCSA Workshop (Attendance open to members only)
• OSGi Developer Outreach Event (Public attendance - open to all)

CCSA Hosts Workshop with OSGi Alliance - Guangzhou, China

The OSGi Alliance is honored to be invited to a workshop with the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) on Tuesday, 28 March, in China. The workshop is intended to explore how CCSA and the Alliance may be able to cooperate on their standards endeavors. This workshop is open to OSGi Alliance and CCSA members only.

The CCSA is a Chinese professional standards organization with the responsibility for developing communications technology standards. The organization was founded on 18 December 2002, by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The CCSA participates in standards development internationally. In 2004, it became an organizational partner of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project and is an organizational partner of 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2. In 2011, it signed a collaboration agreement with the IEEE, and it is recognized by and participates in the standardization activities of the International Telecommunication Union. 

If you are an OSGi Alliance member and are interested in attending please contact us via email to secure a place,

OSGi Alliance Developer Event - Shenzhen, China

We are pleased to announce the first OSGi Alliance Developer event for China.  You are invited to join us for an evening of OSGi on Tuesday, 28 March, from 19:00-21:30 in Shenzhen, China. Whether you are an individual or part of a team in a large company, or whether you are new to the  technology or an experienced expert, we hope you can join us.  

Huawei to host the OSGi Alliance
Developer Event March 28.

OSGi Alliance Board Director Kai Hackbarth will formally open the event, followed by presentations and use cases from Huawei, Liferay and Bosch, covering topics ranging from OSGi and IoT and the IoT Expert Group, to developing with OSGi and Bndtools. 

The OSGi Alliance appreciates Huawei’s support in hosting the event at its R&D center in Shenzhen. We thank Huawei, Liferay, Bosch and the China OSGi Users’ Forum for arranging the event agenda and speakers. We extend our thanks also to the Shenzhen JUG for its support in promoting the event to the local development community.

Registration is essential and ID will be required to access the meeting. Full details of the event and how to register can be found at the event website.   Please note that the meeting will be conducted in Chinese.

If you have any questions, please contact the OSGi Alliance marketing team.

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3月底，OSGi联盟将在中国广州和深圳举办两场精彩活动：

• CCSA专题讨论会（仅限会员参与）
• OSGi联盟开发者会议（对所有人开放）

CCSA与OSGi联盟将在中国广州联合举办专题讨论会 － 中国，广州

OSGi联盟很荣幸能够参加中国通信标准化协会（CCSA）于3月28日星期二在中国举办的专题讨论会。此次专题讨论会将探讨CCSA与OSGi联盟如何在标准化工作方面进行合作。该会议只对OSGi联盟以及CCSA的会员开放。

CCSA是中国专业的标准化组织，致力于通信技术标准的研究工作。该组织由中国工业和信息化部于2002年12月18日建立。

CCSA也参与了国际标准开发工作。2004年，CCSA成为了3GPP和3GPP2的组织成员。2011年，CCSA加入并参与国际电信联盟开展的标准化活动。

欢迎对本次CCSA专题讨论会感兴趣的OSGi联盟会员，通过邮件联系我们报名参加讨论会。(OSGi Marketing)

OSGi开发者会议将在中国深圳举办

我们很高兴地宣布中国将举办第一届OSGi开发者会议。我们邀请您参加此次在中国深圳举办的OSGi联盟活动，时间为3月28日星期二晚上19:30-21:30。无论您是个人还是公司团队的一员，无论您是该技术领域的新手还是有经验的专家，我们都欢迎您的参加。

Huawei to host the OSGi Alliance
Developer Event March 28.

此次会议将由OSGi联盟董事Kai Hackbarth宣布会议开幕，接下来是由华为、Liferay和Bosch代

表发表演讲，演讲主题涵盖的范围包括OSGi、物联网、物联网专家组以及OSGi、Bndtools的发展。

OSGi联盟非常感谢华为为举办本次会议给予的大力支持，同时感谢华为、Liferay、Bosch和中国OSGi用户协会协助安排会议参与者和演讲者。我们还要感谢深圳Java用户组在当地发展社区宣传推广此次会议。

参加此次会议需要注册并提供相应ID。 可在该会议网站上查看此次会议的全部信息以及注册流程。(https://yoopay.cn/event/osgidevevent2017)  温馨提示：会议中的语言会用中文.

如果您有任何问题，请同OSGi联盟市场部联系。(OSGi Marketing)

OSGi at CeBIT 2017

The OSGi Alliance is pleased to be returning to CeBIT again this year between Monday March 20 to Friday March 24.

We will be showcasing the popular OSGi IoT Demo which uses a number of different OSGi open source projects, and commercial products from OSGi Alliance members (Bosch, Eclipse, Eurotech, imec, Makewave, Paremus and Skelmir) to manage and control the operation of LEGO^® trains. This really is a great example of the interoperability of the OSGi specifications and demonstration of how an IoT ecosystem can be created using OSGi technology.

You can find us on Stand C62 in the IoT / M2M Pavilion located in Hall 12 [Map].

Be sure to stop by and say hello . You will also be able to find out more about what we are doing in the demo and broader OSGi activities. You can also take the opportunity to interact with the sensors and RFID tags in the demo to see the affect they have on the LEGO^® trains running around the track.

A number of the OSGi IoT and Enterprise Expert Group members will be on hand to answer any questions you may have about OSGi and its use in IoT and also Enterprise and Cloud.  We would also be pleased to discuss with you about how you can get involved and contribute to new specifications and also join the OSGi Alliance.

IoT Expert Conference Keynote Presentation

Kai Hackbarth, from Bosch, an OSGi Alliance Board Member, will be making a keynote presentation on behalf of the OSGi Alliance on Thursday March 23 at 1.40pm.

 'How OSGi can help to build open IoT ecosystems ?"

IoT is already revolutionising our lives at home, in the car, at work and many other places. With predictions of 20+ billion devices and beyond the IoT impact has only just begun. To support this phenomenal growth and change whats needed is an open modular and service based platform that can support an evolving and dynamic ecosystem. We will look at how OSGi specifications make this a reality, and explore use cases that prove its deliverable today. Further details are available online.

Complimentary Tickets to CeBIT

If you would like to attend CeBIT, and (of course) come and see us or watch the OSGi Keynote we have some complimentary tickets available.  Please contact the OSGi marketing team to request your ticket.

Hope to see you in Hanover March 20 to 24.